App Creates “passport” To America’s Parks

By Author: Steve Robinson
Total Articles: 468

Travelers flying via cheap airplane tickets and staying in discount hotel rooms, who also love visiting national parks, will be pleased to learn that a new iPhone/iPad app has come out that links all 397 national park websites.

This app keeps track of the parks people have visited and allows users to add photos and descriptions of their trip. The app is available for free through the iTunes store.

It is designed to complement Eastern National’s, a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, popular Passport to Your National Parks program by helping users locate passport stamp stations in parks where they can record the location and dates of their visits.

Park visitors are able to purchase passport booklets and collect stamps from most locales. Interest in this program has risen in part because some parks have multiple stamps and some stamps are retired over time, making the pursuit to collect them more challenging.

This passport/stamp program is in its 26th year and was created to help increase interest in and more visits to less well known park sites. While many tourists are aware of high profile parks including Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, National Park Service sites include Indian effigy mounds, Japanese internment camps, and historic houses.

During National Park Week, April 21st through the 29th, all 397 national parks offered free admission.
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